


Better Than This

by minyardss



Category: tatbl
Genre: Gay, LGBT, M/M, Multi, original - Freeform, tatbl - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:22:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26892868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minyardss/pseuds/minyardss
Relationships: cassimir adair/matteo sawyers





	1. Part One- The Two Trains

There are people we meet in life who miss being important to us by inches, days, or heartbeats. Another place or time or a different emotional frame of mind and we would willingly fall into their arms; gladly take up their challenge or invitation. But as it is, we encounter them when we are discontent or content and they are not. Whatever they are, we are not and vice versa. Two trains going in different directions that pass for a few powerful moments at full speed, blasting noise and wind but then they are gone. Whatever serious chemistry might have been possible if, isn’t.  
\- Jonathon Carroll


	2. ONE

When I was nine, I promised myself I would never fall in love.  
I remember the way her golden hair shone under the sunlight, as bright as a thousand suns. I remember the way her eyes crinkled at the corners when she smiled. Of course, she didn't last long- it was one woman after another, one of dad's countless flings.  
Her name was Madeline; fitting, for both she herself and her name reminded me of the sun. It too was a sunny afternoon when dad had killed her, hitting the back of her head with a shovel with full force. Blood splattered on the floor immediately. Even though she was long gone, he still continued to dig the sharp end of tool into her back.  
That was when father had decided it was too much for me- he ushered me in as he watched from the balcony, a perfect view of the scene. Blood had seeped into Madeline's hair, once a beauty turned into something right out of a nightmare. By morning, all trace of her would be gone. The smear of her makeup on dad's white shirt. The blood.   
Before that, I had wondered why the men in the truck would come by every weekend. I never understood why one of the men, Mister Jones, would give my dad a pat on the back as they hauled a black bag out of the house. Dad would grin his winning smile at him, thank all of the men one by one, then walk back into the house like nothing happened.  
Maybe it would have been better if I had never asked. If I hadn't, they never would have showed me. Some nights, I could still see the memory of her lifeless eyes in my head, as vivid as ever. It scared me that something- someone, so beautiful could turn so cold in a matter of seconds.   
"Does no-one ever look for them?" I had one asked dad.  
"Nobody really does, I guess. They're the outcasts- the ones that people will never notice were missing,"  
To hear that there were such people, the ones nobody would look for, broke my heart completely. I had been fortunate enough to grow up in a loving home, with two dads who wouldn't trade me for anything else in the world. Dad had killed too many women for me to count, yet he was as loving as could be.  
If I had gone missing, ending up with the same fate as these women, I wondered if anyone would notice- if anyone would even bother looking for me. For as sure as I can be, for the first week, my dads would look for me. Set up missing posters. By the second week, maybe they would have given up hope, accepting that this was mere fate, with nothing they could do.  
In each and every way, we were an ordinary family.  
Well, that was until they decided to adopt another kid.   
Father had promised me that they would adopt another boy. Dad promised another sibling; right then and there, when he avoided looking into my eyes as he said those words, I knew that he wanted a girl. A girl.  
Why was it only women that dad went after? According to him, they were horrid. Pure monsters, creations of the devil themselves. Every single one of them that had entered his life had left, leaving him to fend for himself. His birth-mother. His foster mothers. As soon as he turned eighteen, he had left to fend for himself, only barely making it alive.  
Fast forwards five years and he was striving for the best. He had struggled applying for high school at twenty-three. Never once had dad ever stood in, even until now. Aidan Adair was the type of man that made heads turn the moment he walked into the room.  
It was easy for him to lure in women from all sorts of ages- his only rule in choosing them was that first of all, they were the ones that were low-risk and second of all, that they were above the age of eighteen. If he were only going to kill them, why exactly did age matter? I didn't really understand, but it was a comfort to know that he didn't go for anyone my age.  
I was raised to believe that women were the worst thing to ever happen to mankind and according to both dad and father, they were. One had given birth to me, carried me for nine months, yet that didn't matter. My mother had chosen to leave me behind for selfish reasons, which was only due to the fact that I had blue eyes and blonde hair, much unlike what she wanted- a green-eyed brunette.  
Every winter morning, I would wake up and it would be the same. Take a shower. Eat breakfast. Brush my teeth. Get dressed properly, then head down to the coffee shop a few streets away as a way to earn more pocket money. Our family was particularly known for being wealthy- father had suggested me to work at one of his offices instead, to which I declined. I was seventeen. I didn't want an office job.  
Dania would walk in the door every morning, the same way she had when they had first adopted her, with an axe in her hand. "Perfect aim," father had said, grinning. That broke my heart in a way nothing ever had before. I was useless with anything that didn't involve studying. In a way, I was always a disappointment to the family, though neither father or dad would ever say.  
For sure, I was basically the brains of the family. Father worked as a politician, owning a few business firms here and there. Dad worked as a cardiothoracic surgeon, one of the best in the entirety of Australia and maybe even the world. Perhaps that was where his fascination in death rooted from. Perhaps it had been the fact that he had been the one to find his father chopped up into the smallest pieces possible.  
I was the kid with straight A's and too many notebooks lying all over the house, notes of all subjects jumbled altogether. It was a miracle I could keep track of which topic was in which, and which exact spot I had left my things at. Dad was a surgeon, though he wasn't necessarily smart in the way you'd expect- he was more of logical and existential, rather than the mathematical-genius type.  
With all due honesty, death was intriguing. There were just so many questions to be asked about it- what happened once we died? Was it eternal suffering? Was there such thing as an afterlife or reincarnation? Was it just nothing at all? Pitch darkness, eternal loneliness and no one to give you warm hugs or kisses?  
All over the house, dad has post-it’s with all sorts of theoretical and existential questions, asking all the questions about death that were ask able. You'd think that after so many years being a surgeon, having so many lives in the palm of your hand, you would have known the questions yet the answer always seemed to stay the same. Maybe. That was all he got, no solid no’s or yesses.  
I never understood how he managed to stay encouraged, though he was never given a solid answer.  
Living with him really made me ask the questions that I believe were the only ones that were truly important in life. What would I do if I could change the world? Would I do something to go down in history? Would I discover something? Would I change who I stood in society?  
My answer was the same and never changing.   
I would have changed society itself.   



End file.
